Television

Friday, September 14, 2018

One in three homicides go unsolved

Earlier this week, NPR reported that more
than one-third of homicides in America go unsolved and examined why
police investigators don’t close more murder cases. The Marshall Project asked
Thomas Hargrove, the founder of the Murder Accountability Project and murderdata.org, to talk about what he’s
learned in a career of studying data on homicide investigations across the
country. After 37 years as an investigative reporter, Hargrove recently retired
from journalism, to “spend my remaining time and energy to improve the
accountability of unsolved murders.”

In the 1980s, about 27 percent of the killings of
both black men and white men were reported to be unsolved at the time of
reporting to the FBI. But from 1990 on, 29 percent of white male killings were
unsolved compared to 38 percent of black male killings. Why the difference?
Some criminologists point to the rise of drug- and gang-related violence in the
murder statistics. These kinds of killings are certainly more difficult to
solve. But there are many, many police departments where the clearance rates between
white and black victims does not show this kind of disparity. It is most likely
that the failure of solve homicides is a failure of will by local leadership.
Police and community leadership in tandem has demonstrated in many communities
that the “no snitching” rule can be overcome by compassionate leaders.

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.